Day 1: Monday, March 20, 2017

2017 Busy Catholic’s Online Lenten Retreat

Living Lent With Love

Day One

Monday, March 20.

Today’s Scripture

(Luke 2:41-51)

Each year his parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom.  …[A]s they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind…, but his parents did not know it. …[T]hey…looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem…. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions….  When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.

Pope Francis’s Reflection

St Joseph is the model of the educator and the dad, the father. I, therefore, entrust to his protection, all parents….  I ask for you the grace to be ever closer to your children, allow them to grow, but be close, close! They need you, your presence, your closeness, your love.  May you be for them as St. Joseph was: guardians of their growth in age, wisdom and grace. May you guard them on their journey: be educators and walk with them. 

(General Audience, St. Peter’s Square, March 19, 2014)

Let Us Pray.

Loving God, you place children in my life with all their promise and their vulnerability. May they see in my words and actions a mirror of your loving face.  May I protect and nurture their dreams and offer my own heart as a safe shelter for all that is fragile and confused, wondering and fearful, in theirs. Teach me how to accompany them so they may know you and I are with them and they are never alone, no matter what is happening in their lives. Amen.

Material in this year’s online retreat is excerpted with permission from Living Lent with Love.

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Published by special arrangement with Creative Communications for the Parish